I never understood weightlifting. Lots of pain, no obvious gain.
Partner loves weightlifting. Her spirit animal is the ant. In graduate school, she could bench press more than her bodyweight, a particularly impressive feat for an estrogen-powered life form. (Among non-professional female powerlifting competitions, benching one’s bodyweight is generally enough to medal.)
Earlier today, I benched 155lbs for 5 reps. A new personal record. Not very impressive for anyone who has lifted weights for a while. Still, I yipped with glee. I remember the day when I broke 135lbs (one 45lb plate on each side of the 45lb bar). Now, I crank out 4 sets of 145lbs with no trouble.
“I remember the day when X was hard. Now, X is easy.” ← a wonderful lesson of weightlifting.
A coaching client of mine has felt incredibly stressed this week. He tells me he wishes not to feel this way every week. I told him he won’t, for two key reasons:
If he truly wants to feel less stress, he can grow slower. It’s a real option. (One he’s not taking 😉)
As you improve, the former difficulty feels easy.
I’ve promised Partner that, when I can bench press my bodyweight, I will bench press her. We might be six months or a year away from that day. But one beautiful trait of the gym: if you show up and do the work, you will see the results.
Lots of pain, no obvious gain? After a few months every day, the gain is unmistakable. Once I learned to breathe properly, the whole experience became enjoyable.
And the pain? You mean the intense difficulty that only lasts for a few seconds? You call that pain? I call it fun.
Inspired by Mbappé’s miss at 55:25 in today’s France/Morocco game or 6:41 inthis highlight video.
Partner thinks that she and I had an argument earlier today. She is wrong.
Partner thinks soccer players should miss more goals. She believes soccer players tend to be overly hesitant, and the best players (including Mbappé and Messi) shoot the ball sooner rather than waiting for the perfect moment that never comes.
I also think that soccer players should miss more goals. I just think the manner in which they should rectify this mistake is more precise than her suggestion. I think they should miss goals by kicking the ball at the goal. (I.e. I believe missed shots on goal are good, not merely missed shots.)
When you kick a ball out of the end line, your opponents receive a goal kick. That’s bad. However, when you kick a ball toward the goal, sometimes it hits an opposing player or the goalie and ricochets back into play. In those circumstances, your team has an opportunity to regain possession or a rebound goal.
Both Partner and I agree that soccer players should shoot more balls. Both of us agree soccer players are overly hesitant. I take her insight one step further by only respecting an increase in shots that are on goal.
Earlier today, Partner thought we had an argument. Now, I’m going to go tell her she was wrong.
“Those who play beside others may desire the company of other children but may not yet have the skills required to play in an associative or cooperative manner.”
I introduced two toddlers today. They were told they’d meet each other. Child A even learned Child 1’s name before the interaction. When they actually encountered each other, they were each asked, “Do you want to [something like “play with”] [other child]?”
Both said no.
They played in the backyard near each other for the next 15 minutes.
They ate dinner near each other for the ensuing 30 minutes.
Child A said Child 1’s name. Child 1’s head snapped up. There were enough strawberries that there was no competition.
They played in the backyard near each other again. Child 1 noticed and commented when Child A fell from their tricycle.
Child 1 left to go home. Then Child A asked if Child 1 would come back outside. Child A was sad that Child 1 had left.
Child A was happy to learn they’d get to play again tomorrow.
—
Subtitle quotation is from Bakeman, Roger; Brownlee, John R. (September 1980). “The Strategic Use of Parallel Play: A Sequential Analysis”. Child Development. 51 (3): 873. doi:10.2307/1129476. JSTOR 1129476.
To move someone, soothe them first. To soothe them, keep it light.
I’ve coached multiple CEOs who flooded when stressed. Emotionally overwhelmed, they sought to soothe their emotions: stimming, drug use, escapism in video games, emotional escalation in unrelated areas.
I’ve since noticed this habit is common. It might even be universal.
Overwhelm is a feeling, not a logic. Most of the time, a police officer shouting, “Calm down!” only escalates the situation.
Meeting someone’s emotional problem with a logical solution generally prompts defensiveness. If you soothe the emotion, logic will follow.
While the platonic form of logic exists outside of emotion, individual human implementation of logic requires a particular emotional state. Just as a human body requires its internal temperature in a relatively narrow band to function harmoniously, so too does the human emotional system require a specific band. Too little stress and one languishes. Too much and one overloads.
If the problem is stress – too much or too little – the first move is treating the stress.
I honed this understanding when dating women in New York City. They were high-powered, hard-working, and overwhelmed by both the city and their activities. My first job – even before the first date – was emotional awareness: creating an environment in which I added no more stress. Clown school calls this “keeping it light”.
It works equally well with teenage boys (I formerly advised a youth group), friends or loved ones undergoing hormonal intensity, and counterparties in negotiations.
I don’t know what it is about me that has drawn me to help extremely stressed people. Maybe it feels familiar to me.
If you are a keeper, do not leave the net unattended such that an opponent can simply kick the ball into the goal.
On one hand, maybe we should celebrate the US Men’s National team only violating one of these cardinal rules? (Rule number 4: Belgium goal at minute 57). On the other hand, their terrible performance does nominate two new rules:
If you are over 13 years old, your defense cannot amount to “freeze and hope that the other team was offside” (Belgium goal at minute 9).
If you are a defender, do not pass the ball to your opponent… twice (Belgium goal at minute 90+3).
The final score was 4-1 Belgium. Only 1 goal was deserved; the other 3 were trash play by the US Men’s National Team. Full high low-lights can be found here.
To make a game mean something, make it fair. To make it fair, make it sport, not art.
On the 4th of July, this sleepy beach town south of Santa Cruz, triples in size: Children, grandchildren, aunts and uncles all come into town for hot dogs, sack races, and sand castle competitions.
The children compete first, in the classic Americana races: a diaper derby (baby race, stratified by crawling and walking), then a three-legged race, balloon-between-the-knees race, and peanut-on-a-spoon race. Even before I fell during the wheelbarrow race and hurt my knee, I was not having a good time. In the evening, when I mentioned this to Partner, she expressed surprise. She said something like, “I would have thought you enjoyed these silly games”.
I do like silly games. I just don’t like this implementation of silly games. Here’s why:
1. The judges aren’t performing their solemn duty.
a. After the peanut race, Partner commented that one child appeared to have held onto the peanut with their thumb. The stated rule was you could only use one hand on the spoon. The judges are insufficient and the rules aren’t clearly defined.
b. The sandcastle competition was similarly poorly adjudicated: The judge at sign up told us we could only use items we found on the beach. We used seaweed, sand, sand dollars, sticks, and one large log. When the judges swung by later, they told us they could only judge sand. Well, that’s a whole different competition! We would have only used sand!
2. The starting positions aren’t really fair.
a. For the balloon-between-the-knees race, pre-blown balloons are passed out willy-nilly. Some are full enough to pop when dropped; others are nearly empty so they bounce on the grass instead of popping. The size of your balloon determines the angle of your legs. This trait matters.
b. For the three-legged race, some contestants’ legs are tied at the knee, others at the ankle, and in varying stages of looseness. A loose-tie three-legged race? Oof!
c. For the bubble-gum-blowing competition:
i. The gum is not simultaneously distributed. The real work in this competition is to chew the gum for long enough and vigorously enough to make it malleable (and perhaps chewing decreases the sugar content, which impacts the bubbles, etc.). The blowing is much less important than the chewing. Ergo, the competition includes stratified and arbitrary head starts.
ii. The measurements are inconsistent. Obviously, one should measure bubble size through the center of the bubble. But the bubbles are not perfect spheres: do you measure the longest distance through the center, or the shortest distance? The judges seem to have no consistency at all, the worst option!
iii. (A small gripe: they announced the competition was open – not age-capped – and then ultimately did age-cap it to only children 10 – 12 years old. I mention this not because it’s as big of a fairness issue, but because it demonstrates the general lackadaisical relationship that the town of La Selva Beach – home to Partner’s grandmother – has to its games.)
I know these games have a purpose that diverges from my approach to them. I know that the purpose is something like “Tradition”, and “Nostalgia”, and “Town spirit”, and “Afternoon activities for a National Holiday”.
For those purposes, I take no issue. July 4th is a great opportunity to eat hot dogs and jump in bouncy castles and host a parade and enlist local teenagers to paint children’s faces to raise money for some small town charity like the library or the fire department or that weird hippie dance group that for some unknown reason had a larger and more populous section in the parade than even the fire department.
The part I take issue with is the games. What are we teaching with them? That judging can be arbitrary and capricious? That you can make every move perfectly using the tools you were given and still lose to some corrupt official or other competitor who was given a head start? Yes, those are true. We know, and we experience those all the time. The beauty of games – of children’s games – is that for a moment life can be fair:
“Who can run fastest to that tree?” is at once modified by the child’s genetics, by the shoes their family can afford, by the amount of free time their parents have to let the kid play outside, by the child’s nutrition, and by a host of other unfair discriminations.
But it is also a terrifically fair question: Who can run fastest to that tree?
Obviously, these games are made for children. They’re age-capped and time-bound and some kids receive ribbons on a podium. But they’re also, fundamentally, not made for children. To create something for children means to make something that helps them be better adults. These games do not do that. These games create short-term whimsy with long-term hollowness. And for babies who cannot walk, watching them maybe trudge toward their parents but mainly just sit, confused, while the announcer jokes that “this race is time-capped at 20 minutes”, is funny in the same way that a snail race is funny. It’s joyful because babies are adorable even when they simply sit like an uncooperative blob, and watching them allows us to laugh at the meaninglessness of this endeavor: like herding cats, only cuter.
But the older kids’ games – the ones where the competition is real, where a child might gain pride from their friends and family for decades for winning the bubble blowing competition (as multiple members of Partner’s family informed me that Partner’s sister won ~2 decades ago) – these rules matter.
These games are not made for me. They’re made for children. And they’re not even made for children. That’s sad.
Games are a struggle against entropy. If you haven’t planned for the tide, your sandcastle will wash away to sea. Bet against the fundamental traits of existence at your peril: gravity pulls mass to mass, tides come and go, time ticks on, and wet sand packs better.
When every other activity washes away to a sea of chaos, games build a wall against the ocean, with referees’ fingers blocking leaks.
The traits of the footrace – which tree was chosen, where the starting line for the race begins, when the race starts – these are controllable. In the game, these are sacred. To have an uneven race is to have a meaningless race. It’s to transform games from games into the mere performance of games. I love theater. Keep it separate.
—
My team’s sand sculpture received glowing reviews from passers-by. I enjoyed the process of making it: the conceptualizing, the strategizing, the digging, and the polishing. I enjoyed the creativity when our plans hit reality. I enjoyed the passing-off of tasks from teammate to teammate. I enjoyed the fact that we created art that prompted many people to snap pictures and comment, “Way to go!” and “I’m tired of seeing flags; this one’s great!”
I didn’t join the sandcastle competition to win. I joined it to build a work of art. We did, we succeeded, and I’m overjoyed.
Now the only honest thing to do is to tell all the children in the sack race that they were actually participating in art, not sport.
In my younger and more formative years, I could compete in a silly physical competition willy-nilly, giving it my all and sometimes winning, sometimes losing, but always having a blast.
Now I am old and crotchety, and when I compete in a wheelbarrow race with insufficient practice and without stretching, I end up with a hurt knee and a possibly torn muscle, and a vow never to participate in a competition of this sort ever again. Loud, packed, dangerous, and with no meaningful success.
My Partner wanted to compete. I didn’t care. This seemed important to her. It was above my skill set. I had some trepidation on the specific form she suggested: applying more pressure on me and basically carrying her with no weight on her hands.
We fell. Tumbled. Rolled. Bounced back up and completed.
And I.
Didn’t.
Like it.
Back when I would do this as a small child, my injuries healed much faster.
But now, in my thirties, what even is the point.
–
Also, Partner’s family and I built a sand castle. Great success! More on that tomorrow!
To win, let the goalie fail. To let him fail, kick the ball at the damn goal.
If you play professional soccer and you miss a shootout penalty kick high or wide, you deserve to be shot.
Penalty kicks are important. In a tied game in the World Cup elimination stage, they determine the fate of your entire nation.
If you miss wide or high, you lose. Over. No opportunity to win. No ability for the goalie to make a mistake.
If you roll the ball toward the goal, one foot per second, as slow as a 4-year-old kicking with maximum power, you could win! The goalie could have a heart attack! Isn’t that great?
When I played middle school soccer, I played goalie. A remarkably low-skilled goalie, I might add. I still remember one moment from a game two decades ago. My team’s best player fouled the opposing team’s best player in the box, prompting a penalty kick. My coach caught my attention and gestured to me with his finger on his lip, pointing left. I immediately thought “I understand what you’re implying: I should go left. But our soccer skills are much worse than you think. Professional goalies choose a side and pray. Middle schoolers kick slow enough that we can choose after the kick.”
The opposing team’s star shot…
And he missed! He shanked it wide! I won! Purely by being there! Did I go left? Did I wait-and-see? Doesn’t matter! I won!
I was not a good soccer player. Don’t let people like me win. Today in the Australia vs Egypt World Cup game shootout, one of the Egyptian players kicked the ball straight down the middle… directly at the goalie… and it still went in! The goalie had chosen a side, and the ball came straight down the pipe! The guy who shot it – Egypt’s captain – even said afterwards, “If anyone was going to Panenka [chip a shot down the middle], it was going to be me!” Egypt won because Australia shot two penalty kicks high.
Shoot. Your. Penalty. Kicks. On. Goal!
Also, an unrelated suggestion: start every soccer game with 3 penalty kicks per side. Makes the game more interesting for one team to be up 2-1 when it starts.
And a non-serious suggestion: if the game ends tied, add a new ball every 10 minutes. Eventually, someone will score.
The machine in the San Jose airport will forever spark rich feelings of joy.
When I was a child, I watched for hours as the balls rolled, spun, twisted, and jumped, pinging the bells and conking on the wooden blocks. Seven balls – nine in the box, but always with two of them fallen to the bottom, having missed the jump or, more likely, the bounce-pass. For hours and hours, I would watch these balls. And never would I see a ball miss.
I remember the rhythm; the conk-CAH-cohnk of the green one that spins.
A while ago I considered the idea of buying up old dormant brands, then relaunching them for a new generation. But here’s the kicker: focus on the same people, not the same product. Instead of Hush Puppies shoes for a new generation of young folk, it’s Hush Puppies slippers for older people. The name was always the pitch: barking dogs meant aching feet, and the 1958 shoes promised to hush them. The slippers keep that promise at 75. It’s not Lunchables for a new generation of school kids; it’s Lunchables for yuppies.
We’re wrong when we say that old habits die hard. In reality, they don’t die. They simply go dormant, waiting for the trigger to reignite those same neurons.
But the same sound, the same rhythm, the same habits of mind: the same rolling ball machine still scratches that same itch.
The airport has moved the machine to a new location. They’ve rotated it so I now watch from the other side. Still, the sounds and the rhythm are the same. It’s nice, it’s comfortable, like an old warm coat passed down from a parent that still smells like them even after it’s washed. I found it in an old box in the back of a closet. How nice it is to feel the spark return to my eyes.
To win, keep the game going. To keep the game going, drink what you’re given.
At 11:15am this morning, I asked my brother-in-law to set a 30-minute timer. I then sunscreened the tops of my feet and I entered the kiddie pool. My nephew (just shy of 2 years old) was playing squirt with my father. Squirt is played as follows:
One player (the toddler) hangs on the water squirter in the kiddie pool. Sometimes he moves.
That’s it. That’s the game. If you think that’s not a game, you’ve probably never played with a toddler.
Our next game was more active. My nephew rotated the water squirter to hit me. I flapped my arms up in the air and emitted a “wah!” noise reminiscent of Waluigi from the Nintendo games.
After water-squirter-based games, my nephew wrapped his arms around a beach ball, then tried to pelt me with it. He failed. He cackled. He chased it down. He repeated.
It was around this time that my sister (Nephew’s mother) said something to me from outside the pool. I asked her to repeat it. She said, “We’re not watching him”, implying I was in charge of this tiny tot’s life, surrounded by 9 inches of murder-liquid.
Whoa. Big responsibility.
Nephew found a truck. His truck. His dumptruck. He filled it with a green cup. He dumped it out. He repeated the cycle.
Finally, we struck upon the game of the day: Nephew fills the green cup with water, then holds it out for Funcle (me) to drink. Funcle mimes drinking the cup, using only his mouth (no hands!). Nephew cackles. Nephew fills the cup again. This time, Funcle grips the cup using his lips. He drops the cup with a “blah!” sound, imitating the sound of a blub-blub fish.
Repeat this game for 15 minutes.
You might think this game gets boring.
It does not.
At 11:45am, my brother-in-law told me my alarm had gone off, prompting me to check on Partner. I tagged in Oma to ensure the Nephew stayed safe, checked on Partner, and returned to the kiddie pool after learning Partner was on her way down.
The games continued.
Have you ever reminisced about something from a mere 9 hours ago?
Julian Wise 